“Wait!” she called to Kevin Boatman. He swung around, his wide shoulders filling the doorway.
“How’d you do?” he asked as she caught up with him.
“Good enough, I think,” she said. “How ’bout you?”
The cadence of his speech was slow and measured, as always, like every word tested itself in his chest’s cavern before finding its way out into the world. “Okay. I haven’t started the book, so I guessed some answers. How did Johnny hurt his hand? I said he got bitten by a zombie.”
“Um, yeah, I think you might not get full marks for that one.”
Somebody shoved Sophie into Kevin. Hard. “Tugboat and Slow Boat! A perfect match!”
“You can’t even tell them apart!” said someone else.
Sophie whirled to face her attackers, who were already halfway down the hall. Their Pilots looked like they were twinkling, but that was just the effect of their bouncing hair as they laughed. She didn’t remember the name of the tall girl who had shoved her. She thought maybe they shared gym class, the only class she took with the Piloted kids; she was never good with names and faces of people who weren’t her friends. Whoever this girl was, they were definitely not friends.
She dropped her bag at Kevin’s feet, hoping he would keep an eye on it. She caught up with the other girls before the end of the hall. They weren’t looking in her direction anymore, so when she stuck out a foot to trip the taller one, she managed to catch them by surprise. Tall Girl sprawled across the floor, spilling books in front of her.
The friend shrieked and didn’t stop shrieking. Like a banshee, Sophie’s ma would say. Sophie tried to slip back down the hall unnoticed, but the screeching girl pointed at her. “Teacher! Teacher!”
Mr. Kenworth poked his head out into the hallway, then ducked back into his classroom. The Code Orange alarm went off, telling the students to get themselves to the nearest classroom and close the door. Code Orange? Attacker-at-large? Sophie reached for the nearest classroom door, but Mr. Kenworth had appeared in the hall again.
“Don’t move, Sophie.” He looked like he wanted to grab her by the scruff of the neck like the police in some old movie about juvenile delinquents. She didn’t move. The hall was empty now except for Mr. Kenworth and the two girls, the one screaming and the other silent. Kevin must have gone into a room like they were supposed to in a Code Orange. Her backpack sat abandoned by the English classroom; hopefully that wasn’t enough to merit a Code Green suspicious-package alarm.
The bully sat where she had landed, a felled tree, clutching her right wrist in her left hand. Sophie knew she should ask the girl if she was okay, make some effort at reconciliation. Instead, she went for her backpack. She knew what came next: the office, her mothers, trouble, trouble, trouble.
• • •
Sophie wasn’t sure which mother she hoped would come until she saw Julie pull into the parking lot. Mom would be quicker to defend Sophie instead of considering the teacher perspective. Maybe.
“Seriously? She did what?” she asked, after hearing Mr. Kenworth’s take on what had happened. She turned to Sophie. “Did you push this Tonya girl?”
“Sort of,” Sophie said, shrugging. “I tripped her, but she pushed me first.”
“I didn’t see that,” said Mr. Kenworth.
Sophie crossed her arms. “You didn’t see me trip her, either. You saw her on the floor and assumed I pushed her ’cause that other girl pointed at me.”
“But you did push her?” asked Mrs. Moritz. She sat behind her desk like a presiding judge, with everyone else in chairs facing her. Sophie thought it made them all look equally guilty.
“No. I tripped her. I told you, she pushed me first, into Kevin. She called me Slow Boat.”
Mrs. Moritz smiled a concerned smile. “Did you have to react, Sophie? Could you have told a teacher?”
Sophie shook her head and mustered patience. Adults were so dense about what went on. “There were no teachers. If I let her push me, she’d push me again harder next time.”
“How is the other girl?” asked Julie. “You said on the phone she was taken to the hospital?”
“Yes, for X-rays of her wrist,” said Mr. Kenworth. “It looked broken to me.”
Julie’s smile was thin-lipped and insincere. “Well, hopefully it’s not broken. I assume you asked Sophie if she was okay, too?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I just don’t like getting shoved when I didn’t do anything.”
“So, are we done here?” Julie sank back into the chair.
Mrs. Moritz spread her hands. She looked like she had all the time in the world. “I’m afraid I can’t let it go that easily. A student was assaulted. That’s grounds for automatic suspension.”
“Suspension? You’ve got to be kidding!” Julie gripped her chair’s arms and sat straighter. “She defended herself. It wouldn’t have happened if you had teachers in the hall monitoring the class transition, I’ll bet.”
“Nevertheless, a student is in the hospital. I have a duty to protect everyone.”
“Sophie is half the size of most kids in her class. You know she doesn’t have a behavior plan, and you know kids in her class get bullied for not having Pilots. Are you sure you don’t have this backward? Shouldn’t the other girl’s parents be called as well?”
Mrs. Moritz put a hand to her Pilot without seeming to notice she was doing it. Kids with Pilots never did that, but all the adults who had them always touched the light when somebody mentioned it. “When I talk with her father, I’ll tell him I don’t think he needs to press charges.”
“Press charges?” Julie was out of her chair now. “Don’t you dare put those words in his head. Do you really think Sophie is a threat?”
“Cool,” said Sophie under her breath. Mom threw her a look and she shut her mouth again.
“Sophie is not generally aggressive or a problem student. We’ll certainly take that into consideration. In
